


look backward & say goodbye

by queerofcups



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Minor Character Death, Monsterfucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:54:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24203956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerofcups/pseuds/queerofcups
Summary: Dan makes a friend at a funeral
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 12
Kudos: 70





	look backward & say goodbye

  
Oh, thank Christ.   
He’s not the only one here.

Dan walks across the well-manicured grass, careful to avoid headstones, or stepping too firmly on what he thought might be someone’s grave. 

The gathering he’s headed toward is small, but at least it's _there_. For the years he’d known her, the only other people he’d seen at Mildred’s house was a rotation of young, astonishingly pretty men. She’d always giggled when he’d asked her what modeling agency she was hiring from. And then she’d nagged him to ask one of them, any of them, on a date so he’d stop hanging around with an old lady like her. 

Christ, he’ll miss the old battleaxe. She’d been so sweetly firm, insistent on the way she liked things, and meddlesome. 

And alone. 

She’d been so alone, in the end. Dan had put off so much, just to sit in her bedroom and hold her hand and occasionally read to her. The last thing she’d said to him was to get a haircut and buy some skinny jeans that actually fit. 

When he’d come round her flat, a floor below his, and let himself in with the key she’d given him a year ago, and there were strangers with her eyes and her formidable height, he’d known. Neither of Mildred’s kids--Sharon and Micheal--had taken kindly to a stranger letting himself in their mother’s house. But they didn’t look surprised when he told them his name. 

Sharon had taken his phone number and handed him an envelope.

Mildred had known she was going and made it a point to nag him one last time. She’d left him a note and a check. The note was a reminder to write down some of the ideas he was always boring her with when she just wanted to watch telly. And to take care of Nelson, her cat.

Dan scoffed at that. Mildred was a consummate reader and swore she only owned a television because she liked the look of them. 

He’d told Sharon and Micheal as much through watery eyes. It was the first time either of them looked at him with anything other than cool acknowledgment. There was a spark of recognition as if they’d heard the same line before. 

And then there was the check. 

Dan tried to give it back. He’d insisted that he couldn’t. He’d only known Mildred for a few years, only spent a night here and there with her. They’d read together and played a few games of chess and perhaps he’d come to her because she was the only person in his life that he could just be himself with. 

But it wasn’t worth _this_. 

He said as much but Sharon waved a hand and told him that her mother was always serious about her gifts and that he didn’t need to do anything but say goodbye to her one last time. 

So here he was, just after noon on a Tuesday, because there was no job keeping him away. Mildred had given him enough that he didn’t have to work now, and maybe never again. She’d given him a kind of freedom he hadn’t thought was possible.

He just needed to be here, with this quiet cluster of people, all dressed in black. If they’re anything like Micheal and Sharon, they won’t be warm, they may not even be crying. But Dan’s had three different nightmares of being the only one graveside. 

He couldn’t have skipped saying goodbye, but it would have been awful to do it alone. 

When he gets closer, he can see that there are a handful of people he can mostly identify. Micheal and Sharon are there, and people Dan can guess are their spouses and children. Some of them look vaguely familiar from the photos that had filled Mildred’s walls--people he’d never thought he’d see in real life.

The only one he can’t place is the only other white guy there. He looks to be about Dan’s age, and he’s standing a little apart from the family. None of them are acknowledging him, but then, they’re all watching the priest say the opening passage. 

Dan finally makes it close enough, just behind the guy he can’t identify. There are only enough chairs for the immediate family, he supposes. The guy glances at him--he’s thin and tall and his eyes are so blue, Dan wonders for a second if he’s a nurse who was particularly close to Mildred--then looks away. 

The rest passes as normal. There are passages and singing and then there’s the final goodbye. The family says their final farewells, placing flowers and the occasional trinket on the casket, and then step aside until finally there’s only Dan and the guy left. 

Dan pauses and glances over, but the guy makes no move, so he goes to touch the dark cherry of the casket and whisper his last thanks. 

Then Mildred is really, truly gone, down and down and back into darkness. 

And Dan is, more or less, alone again. 

This family is strangers to him, probably wondering who he is and how he’d known Mildred. Sharon nods at him once, as she leaves, and it's all the acknowledgment he receives. 

He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to feel. 

His own mum hadn’t understood their relationship. He’d thought he’d been prepared for when Mildred eventually went, but now he’s here and she’s not and he doesn’t know what, exactly, there is to do about that. 

“Hey,” the guy says, and Dan jumps. He hadn’t realized the bloke hadn’t left with the family. 

Dan looks at him, at those eyes, and shivers as a chill goes down his body. 

He’s still shaking with it, just a little, when he says, “Yeah?”

“This is weird but...do you want to get a drink with me?”

And Dan doesn’t do this. He doesn’t drink with strangers. He doesn’t go out with random men. 

He’s out, but he still feels so awkward about people knowing, about people thinking they _understand_ something about him now that they know he’s gay. 

He doesn’t know why he’s even thinking about that. 

He doesn’t know why he says yes. But he does. 

* * *

“Your hands are so fucking cold,” Dan gasps as Phil’s hands slip under his shirt. “Oh, oh.”

“You’re noisy,” Phil mutters, leaning down to bite the side of Dan’s neck. 

As if there’s anyone around to hear them. 

They’d found the only bar open at 3pm that wasn’t also serving food. There were only a few people, the kind who have a mid-day martini in smart dresses and jackets and they’d cleared out quickly enough. 

By the time Phil’s smile and hips had turned the way Dan recognized as flirty, there’d been one person on the other end of the bar. 

By the time Dan had leaned in and poorly whispered, “Do you wanna go somewhere a little quieter?” he’d only heard the bartender snort. 

But Phil had nodded and stood and tugged Dan toward a bathroom door he hadn’t noticed before. 

The bathroom was totally different from the bar. Dan was tipsy, but he was mostly sad and lonely. Not so gone that he didn’t notice and cluck his tongue at the difference in decor. The bar had been chic, all glass and metal and brick. 

The bathroom was dim, dark and lush. Full of dark wood furniture and deep red velvet pillows. It was tacky, honestly, but the couch was full length and the whole place was empty enough that Dan doesn’t think a second thought when he hears the door lock. 

Wait. 

Phil’s mouth was still worrying Dan’s neck. One hand was tucked into the small of Dan’s back and the other was clumsily tugging at Dan’s belt. 

Dan squinted into the darkness. 

“Did you lock the door?”

“Hm?” Phil asked, head popping up. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry. No one’s going to bother us.”

His eyes are so blue. His skin is so pale, almost pearlescent and his fingers so cold. 

There’s something whispering at the edge of Dan’s thoughts, but it's brushed away by Phil’s mouth on his, the cool plush give of his bottom lip. 

It’s so dark. Had it been so dark when they’d come in?

Dan’s got deja vu, which is odd because he’s never been in a bathroom quite so fancy. Mildred had mentioned, in her stories about life, ladies sitting rooms but he’d certainly never been in one. 

His shoes come off. 

Phil’s hands are so soft. There’s one on his belly now. They’re chilled, cadaver cold, but they’re so soft and Dan hasn’t been touched in so long. 

Phil had joked about watching videos about making slime on their short walk from the graveyard to the bar. He’d told Dan that he writes instructional pamphlets, which is a lot of copy/pasting, and he has to fill up the time somehow. He was cute, if a little boring, and Dan had been pleased when the flirting started. 

He finally gets Dan’s pants open and shoved down. 

The lights are dim and waver, almost like candles. It’s a good thing. Without the candles, they’d be in the dark, the deep, sucking darkness, like the one that had taken Mildred. 

“She always said you were great,” Phil says.

Warmth wraps around Dan’s cock. It’s perfection. Just tight enough, a gulping warmth that keeps pulling him in and in. 

Phil keeps talking, gentling Dan when he stirs. He talks about Mildred, how she’d loved Dan, how she though Phil would, too. 

He feels it all, Phil’s voice in his ear, Phil’s chest pressed to his. Phil’s hand on his back, on his stomach. On his thigh, the cold one that clacks when he squeezes the sides of Dan’s throat. 

Dan raises his legs, bracketing Phil’s hips with his thighs and somehow, Phil’s hands are there as well, icy fingers pressing in and in and in. He doesn’t know how, he wasn’t ready, hasn’t had anyone there in so long. But there’s no resistance, just pressure and simmering icyhot feeling.

“What?” Dan gasps. 

He is surrounded, Phil is everywhere. He is too many places at once and Dan can barely breathe for all of him. 

And Phil places two heavy, boney fingers against his lips and he opens his mouth and then he doesn’t even do that. 

They hold in the pattern, Dan reduced to nerves sparking into what he supposes is pleasure and Phil and all his impossible hands in and over and around Dan.

Dan only comes because his body has to. His limbs, his cock, they all only know one thing to do with the drawstring tension; to release. He grunts and tightens and shoots. He opens his eyes wide and expands his lungs but there’s only darkness and no air. The candles have blown out. 

And then he blinks, and he’s laying on a fancy couch with his pants around his thighs. Phil’s weight is gone, but his lips are pressed to Dan’s brow. His hands are cold against Dan’s thigh, and, for just a second, skeletal--grey skin stretched thin across phlanges. There is nothing in Dan’s hands. He’d been touching Phil before, some part of him, but that seems impossible now. Phil couldn’t have a form, he couldn’t be anything but warmth, surrounding and engulfing Dan entirely. 

“Um,” Dan says, blinking again. 

And Phil is back, properly heavy on Dan’s chest, skin filled out with muscle and blood. Dan doesn’t know why he’s noticing that. As if Phil hadn’t always been filled out with all of those necessary things. 

“I don’t usually do this,” Dan says, gingerly resting his hands on Phil’s back. 

“Me either,” Phil says, leaning back so he can look down at Dan. He’s grinning this wide, goofy grin that Dan finds so, so charming. “Do you want to come back to mine and keep doing it?”

There’s something Dan should be remembering right now. It’s plucking at his brain, a thing with many hands and arms and cold, cold fingers. 

“Sure,” Dan says, “We have to go by my flat first. I need to feed the cat.”

“A cat!” Phil says excitedly. “I can’t wait to meet him. I’ve heard so much about Nelson.”

Dan smiles back at him, “Yeah. Let me clean up and then we can go.”

Phil helps him stand up and grabs a handful of rough towels for him to clean up. When Dan’s finished and ready to go, Phil offers his hand. 

There’s a hint of hot iron in the air, and Dan remembers the dark. 

But it’s a flash, come and gone so quick that he doesn’t see it past the brightness of Phil’s smile. 

Mildred would have liked him. 

**Author's Note:**

> Song title is from Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" which is a very dumb joke.   
> You can find me at queerofcups.tumblr.com


End file.
